“The Budget Digest 2020/21 published 1/2/21, made no mention of new renewable energy installations in the 5 year budget, which could help the Council meet its Net Zero Carbon Plan by 2030.
The entire energy requirements of the Council, 20GWh electricity and 44GWh heating per year, could be provided renewably by investing in solar panels with battery backup installed on buildings and carparks where the energy is used, for self-consumption only, at a cost of around £41m, fully funded by interest free Government Salix loans, at no cost to Carmarthenshire’s Council Tax payers.
The Salix loans would be paid back over 8 years through energy savings. Then all energy would be free of charge to the Council, saving £4.8m / year, which could be used to provide better services to the community.
Details and calculations available at:
https://www.carmarthenshireenergy.org/YSG/PublicFiles/media/CCCRenewableEnergyInvestment.pdf
Question: Why is the Council not taking advantage of this ideal opportunity to become self-sufficient in renewable energy?”
Minutes:
“The Budget Digest 2020/21 published 1/2/21, made no mention of new renewable energy installations in the 5 year budget, which could help the Council meet its Net Zero Carbon Plan by 2030.
The entire energy requirements of the Council, 20GWh electricity and 44GWh heating per year, could be provided renewably by investing in solar panels with battery backup installed on buildings and carparks where the energy is used, for self-consumption only, at a cost of around £41m, fully funded by interest free Government Salix loans, at no cost to Carmarthenshire’s Council Tax payers.
The Salix loans would be paid back over 8 years through energy savings. Then all energy would be free of charge to the Council, saving £4.8m / year, which could be used to provide better services to the community.
Details and calculations have been given in the web page in your agenda pack
Why is the Council not taking advantage of this ideal opportunity to become self-sufficient in renewable energy?”
Response by Councillor Cefin Campbell, Executive Board Member for Communities and Rural Affairs:-
“Thank you Mr Parker for your question. A part of your question relates to again our ability to create renewable energy as a local authority and in my answer to a previous question, we are hindered by the lack of capacity on the local distribution network and that does cause us a great frustration as I mentioned earlier on because we have schemes on our brownfield land that we own as a local authority. We have schemes for solar panels and wind turbines but, unfortunately, we can’t proceed with those schemes at the moment. Hopefully, within the next two years we can lobby Western Power and Welsh Government to provide the resources to enable us to do that, then we can move forward extremely quickly.
So, in terms of the Salix work that you refer to specifically, we have made great strides in reducing the carbon footprint in our non-domestic buildings and in particular with the interest free Salix invest to save programme, we have invested as a local authority in that particular scheme over £2m in some 200 energy efficiency projects. Now this investment is projected to save over 41,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent over the lifetime of the installed technology. This investment, coupled with the Council’s on-going property rationalisation, which I mentioned regarding the council homes for example, the agile working that we are currently discussing and maintenance programmes as well is producing financial and carbon savings in times of increasing utility prices.
One final point, we are reducing our carbon footprint as well in terms of our street lighting. We recently completed the conversion of over 80% of our 20,000 street lighting lanterns to low energy light-emitting diode (LED lighting) with interest-free funding from Welsh Government’s Programme. So, the remaining street lighting already use low energy dimming lanterns but these will be changed to LED at end of life. And, finally, we also maintain approximately 4,300 community Street Lights on behalf of the 72 town and community councils. These again are being converted to LED with energy efficient dimmable lanterns put in place as well.
So, despite our frustrations around the lack of capacity on the national grid, I can vouch that we are still managing to achieve a large number of energy savings. So, I hope that answers your question.
Mr Parker asked the following supplementary question:-
“There’s a bit of a misunderstanding I think in my question. I had asked about installation of solar power and battery back up on local installations which do not need any export to the national grid, so there’s no limitation by national power or Western Power. So, there’s no reason not to go ahead with this today. It’s very simple you just call up a solar installer and they install. You mentioned some spending with Salix which I understand was done quite a few years ago but that shows it is quite possible but, as an example you quoted £2m. Now, for the full investment to make the full energy for the council properties you need £41m. That’s 5% invested over the last five years but, we only have nine years left for your 2030 deadline to be net carbon zero. So, I don’t see how at that rate it can possibly happen. How can you speed these things up?
Councillor Campbell responded as follows:-
“I’ll take the last point first and then I’ll go back to your opening statement in your second question.
I think you probably do understand that this last year, which is the first year of our action plan has been unprecedented as I mentioned earlier on. We’ve had to down tools on many of these developments in order to respond to the urgency of the pandemic and, as I’ve mentioned we’ve had staff who’d normally be working on this and on projects to decarbonise even further our housing stock and our non-domestic buildings, we’ve had them put on projects that have had a direct bearing on tackling the pandemic. So, I hope you can excuse us, I’m not making excuses, but these are factual reasons why perhaps we haven’t made the progress many of us were hoping to achieve during that first year. So, I hope you can understand the situation that many of our officers were faced with during this first year of working on the action plan. But, hopefully, if the health of the nation allows over the next nine year’s we can certainly speed up our work on achieving our net carbon target.
So, specifically around battery storage, we are exploring opportunities as we speak with our new build housing development in Glanmor Terrace, which I referenced earlier on, which incorporates solar pv and, as I mentioned battery storage. Now, we’re also looking at investing battery storage in our council housing stock as well, which I also mentioned earlier on. So, we’re in the first year, we are feeling our way in what has been a challenging year for everyone. But, I’m hoping if you come back with a similar question next year about this time we will have achieved far more, the pandemic allowing of course. I hope that answers your second question.